Chapter 18

18

Jonathan

I have a very dangerous obsession with my own misery. If left to my own devices, I will create a life of such despair that it would shock any other human being. To combat this, I do two things: I buy things and I kill people. I buy a lot of things and I kill a lot of people.

After I leave Les Puces, I check into the Ritz because it is the most expensive hotel I can think of on short notice.

"I would like to book a suite," I tell the front desk clerk. I was paid on completion for the triple in Florence. I have more money than I have ever had at once, and I need to spend it as quickly as possible.

I order everything I can think of online, to be delivered tomorrow, or in five minutes if possible. Artesian water, a medical-grade first aid kit, all the toiletries Tom Ford sells. I order a new suit, and someone to tailor it. And then I order three more suits. Six pairs of shoes. Socks. Underwear. Eight phones.

Then I start making orders through the dark web: designer drugs and designer weapons and designer information.

Nowadays, the internet is a much better place to find people than the out-of-doors. I use the hackers at my disposal to procure a passenger list—all 471 people on our train. I search for "Eva." Her name is not on the list. Strange.

As the sun comes up, I call the train station in Paris. "I'm trying to track down a woman from my car. She left behind her phone…"

I call the train station in Florence. "If you could just help me…"

I call the train company.

I am just about to start calling the other passengers—I tracked them down, no problem—when I get a text.

Coffee?

I hang tough for a while, knowing that this will turn out the way it always does—badly for both of us—but also knowing I will go. I will try and keep trying. I cannot help it. That is what love does.

—

We meet at a coffee shop in Pigalle, next to where Mas lives, next to where he works. He fell in love and his world got incredibly small. His entire existence narrowed to a point: her.

He has chosen a chic coffee shop to go with his chic life. He sits on a traditional red bistro chair under an awning, hemmed by scraggly Parisian trees. He is wearing a French suit and French shoes and a French expression of distaste. He looks like he belongs. He looks like a normal human being. I do not understand it.

"Hey," he says as I approach. He has already ordered coffee for me: black, like my heart. "You caught me off guard yesterday," he says as I take the seat across from him. "It's not that I don't want to see you." I know. It goes much deeper than that.

"Never mind," I say. Sometimes I miss him. But whenever I am around him, I feel this phenomenal sense of shame—my wrongness in the world. I feel it now, creeping up on me.

"So," he says, "how are you doing?" I can see how much he does not want to ask, does not want to know. Even though I never tell him the full truth. He does not want the truth. Neither do I. No one wants the truth.

"Yeah. Great."

"You look really…I mean, considering you were just shot. You look better than I would expect." I have the money to thank for that. With enough money, you can look phenomenal no matter how dark you go.

"You look well, too," I say. He looks a different kind of good than I do. I look flash and expensive and fit. He looks content. You cannot buy that look with money.

We are quiet for far longer than is comfortable. Neither of us knows what to say. Mas does not want to ask about my life. I should ask about his, but I cannot pull the words together.

I sip my coffee to pass the time, hunched forward like I am chained to the table. When we have stayed silent for so long that neither of us can move, neither of us can breathe, I force myself to say something. Anything.

"I met someone." I do not know why I said that.

"What?" His expression is not what I expected—in place of pleasure is something more purely like terror. "What do you mean?"

I do not know what I mean. I did not meet someone. I had sex with someone on a train, then fainted. I have now failed to track this someone down. I will probably never see her again. I actually feel bad for Eva, bad for using her for this twisted purpose: to try to make my brother think I am all right.

"I just mean, on the train. I don't know. She was…" She was what? Up for sex? Smart? Funny? The truth is, I know nothing about her. Not her phone number. Not her last name. I am not even sure if she gave me her real first name; it was not on the passenger list. Maybe she snuck onto the train. She could be anyone. She could even be no one—did anyone else talk to her? Did I dream her up? Is all of my life building up to the pathetic last-minute twist of an unreliable narrator?

Mas is looking down at my hands. I am doing that thing I do, my nervous tic. Rubbing my fingers across my palm over and over. My hands are still only when they are holding weapons.

Mas sighs. "You need therapy."

"I had therapy," I remind him.

I had years of therapy in prison, although I was not exactly forthcoming with my counselor. I sometimes wished that he could help me, but the risk was too great: that he would see me, that he would say, This thing cannot get out .

If I could have faked it I would have, but I never really mastered the art of convincing people that I am normal. Instead, I chose to be invisible. I developed a negative charisma. I taught myself to disappear inside a room.

I returned to therapy, at Mas's request, after I was released. Without the threat of continued incarceration hanging over my head, I floated a little of the truth to my new therapist. The results were unexpected.

"You're so big and you're so intimidating and you've already committed murder. You don't realize," he told me, "what you have is a gift."

Mas feels differently. Hell, so do I.

It was this therapist who introduced me to Thomas—another of his patients, who had been suffering from severe anxiety ever since he had gotten into the murder-for-hire business. He brought us together in exchange for a fee. If he had been really good at his job, he would have asked for a percentage.

Mas knows all this and seems unwilling to argue with me. It is clear that our meeting is rapidly unraveling. We both know exactly how it will descend, all the way down to the moment I killed for him.

Mas sees this ending, too, and it is his turn to try to derail it. "So. I wanted to…The reason I asked you here…" Mas hedges, which is not like him.

"Spit it out," I say.

"Giselle is pregnant," he says.

I choke on my coffee. "Oh…Congratulations." He does not look impressed by my tone. My tone was not intentional.

He sits back in his chair and narrows his eyes at me. "I can't decide if I want you to see the baby. Sometimes I think I do. Then I remember reality, and I don't."

"Goddamn reality," I say wryly. I cannot believe she is pregnant. I cannot believe he is doing this.

"You can't just be happy," he complains.

"Exactly. That is exactly it," I say. I toy with the buttons of my new suit. Tom Ford brought it over this morning. "The thing is, Mas, you don't understand me. And I'm glad you don't. I envy you for not understanding."

He makes a face. He hates when I do this. It is as if he finds my misery competitive. As if he has to win at that, too. "I understand more than you think," he says. "I joined the army."

"To be a surgeon."

"I understand more than you think," he repeats. His eyes are intense. I look away. I hate it when he really looks at me, like I am terrified that he really sees me.

When he looks at me like this, I wish I could go back to when we were children. To when he looked at me in a completely different way. When I was his savior. When I was his hero. When I was the one protecting him.

"No, you don't." I subtly rebutton my coat. If he understood, he would not be settled. If he was really like me, he could not be happy. I do not blame him, but I also cannot be around him for long. "I have to go."

I stand and start to walk away.

"Ethan," he says. Ethan is my real name. It is close to my fake name because that makes it easier to respond to.

I turn back to face him. "Can you please not say that?" I ask him in an undertone, scanning the crowds. I do not think I am really being watched all the time—especially not now, when I am "off sick"—but I do not want to chance anything. Mas knows better than to use my real name in public. We should not even be meeting out in the open like this. Mas knows that, too. His text was a challenge in a way. It said that he was the one trying, that I was the problem. I am.

I start walking again, before he can take any more risks. "We're moving," he says. That stops me. "I'm not telling you where, and I'm not telling you when. You'll have to find another doctor."

It has been a year since we last saw each other—at least since he saw me. I have seen him, here and there. Checked up on him.

The truth is, he could not escape me if he wanted to. But another truth is, I need to let him go.

"Good call," I say.

It is better for everybody. It is the right thing to do. I can do the right thing once.